Main menu

Diskurs Festival 15 on Spatial Arts

From 7th to 11th of October, 2015 the association of Kunstrasen Giessen e.V. hosted the 31st edition of the DISKURS festival. DISKURS 15 - Festival on Spatial Arts laid the focus on the relationship between art and thinking, space, performance and architecture. Synthesized as GROUND CONTROL, this year's DISKURS gathered the notional and physical spheres of the festival and was a space for art – social and tangible. It was a platform for innovative concepts, also beyond theatrical contexts.

The DISKURS festival stands almost traditionally for young international performative arts in Giessen. Every year students of Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaften (Institut for Applied Theater Studies) conceptualise a festival that focuses on interdisciplinary artistic practice and a contemporary exchange of arguments with a theoretical and cultural demand. DISKURS 15 brings artists, theorists and the audience together and builds up an enriching environment of arts, science, politics and entertainment.

The Festival of Spatial Arts presented 14 outstanding international projects, including installations, performances, dance and workshops. In her workshop Body Mapping NATHALIE FARI used the body as a translational tool of space. Together with students she tried out site-specific embodiments by enabling the emergence of a wide range of moments of interaction, aesthetic expieriences and spatial situations.

During five days a group assembled by two bachelor students and three parcours practitioners came together to explore specific aspects of two squares of the city of Gießen - Bahnhofplatz and Marktplatz - and to elaborate a common dramaturgy. The main task was to find a spatial and especially physical translation for these particular sites by creating a collective action which was presented on the last day of the Festival under the title: WHEREDOYOUTWIST - EineStehstudiezumEisbrechen (EN: A standing study for breaking the ice).